


slide me (through the open door)

by yanak324



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Identity Issues, Natasha helps, On the Run, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Resolved Sexual Tension, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve wrestles with his guilt, teeny tiny references to Sharon Carter and Bruce Banner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 14:16:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6988360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yanak324/pseuds/yanak324
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha teaches him how to run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	slide me (through the open door)

**Author's Note:**

> I have always found Natasha and Steve's relationship to be platonic and then Civil War happened. If the writers didn't want us going down this road, they shouldn't have dropped so many crumbs along the way aka everything Natasha did for Steve in the movie. This is largely inspired by my headcanon that she would absolutely find him after the movie, especially with Bucky going under...and the fact that Steve clearly needs to catch up with what's going on between them! I hope I did this pairing justice and hope you guys enjoy :)

xxx

Wakanda is beautiful but it’s not home. 

Maybe if he’d woken up here instead of New York City, he may have just stayed and this entire mess never would have happened. 

But as it stands, as _he_ stands, leaning his forehead against the cool glass and staring off into the foggy rain forest, Steve knows all the way down to his bones that there is no alternate universe in which he wouldn’t end up where he is now – at least metaphorically. 

He would still fight for Bucky, still protect Wanda and still refuse to sign the damn Accords. 

He would still plant himself like a tree and not move. 

The only thing he regrets is the collateral damage – so much of it that it’s almost too overwhelming to think about – especially since he had such a direct hand in most of it. 

The team might be alive and out of prison but they don’t seem better off for it. 

He’s not worried about Lang – the guy is all too familiar with being a fugitive, and seemed to actually get off on sticking it to the big guys. 

But the rest of them, Jesus… 

The very fact that Clint can’t see his kids for the foreseeable future tears Steve up inside, especially after the archer promised to keep Wanda safe.

And Sam…good old reliable Sam, who so vehemently protested separating from Steve and Bucky after they broke him out of prison – Sam has probably been to a dozen different countries by now in an effort to cover his tracks. 

And Tony…Steve doesn’t even know where to begin. 

He’d written that letter seemingly on autopilot, because for the life of him, he can’t remember what he wrote, except for the part where he promised to be there if Tony called. Because he would be. 

He’d be just a phone call away for the rest of his life if that’s what it took to chase the guilt away. 

Guilt he had shoved to the deepest crevice of his mind during the battle. Guilt he’d hoped to channel towards Bucky’s recovery. 

But with Bucky where he is now...well damn. 

Steve backs away from the window when he finds himself pressing too hard on the glass. 

With one more glance at the scenery, he leaves the room, hoping to find a quiet place to sit and think about his next move.

Weeks later, when Steve reflects on that day, he finds it quite ironic that the one person he hadn’t really thought of or worried about is the one who shows up at his front door. 

“What? Surprised to see me, Cap?” Natasha asks by way of greeting before pushing her way into the massive suite.

Steve is so relieved to see her, he doesn’t stop her. He just stands mutely by the door, watching her scan the space. 

“The people of Wakanda are strangely forgiving and very hospitable apparently.” Natasha turns around with a smile that immediately falls upon inspection of his face. 

He opens his mouth to speak, to say anything – choke out an overdue apology maybe, but Natasha holds up her hand. 

“Before you start self-flagellating, let me tell you why I’m here.” 

Her expression immediately morphs into something that’s almost intimate, the game face he’s seen countless times before. It would be comforting in a way if it wasn’t so unnerving.

“I’m about 10 hours ahead of a U.S. led extraction team that is on its way here to strike against Wakanda if T’Challa doesn’t hand you over.” 

Steve feels all the heat leave his body. 

“They know you’re here.”

In an instant, everything changes. His entire body recalibrates and he is reduced to fight-or-flight instinct. He grabs Natasha’s arm as though the threat she speaks of is outside the door. 

“We gotta move.” 

Natasha nods in agreement. 

Thirty minutes later, they’re in the back of a cargo truck heading south out of the city. 

This is the most jarring thing he’s done since breaking his team out of prison but it feels incredibly right.

He has a mission now, a goal.

Keep moving to keep Bucky safe. Keep moving so the people of Wakanda don’t become collateral damage. 

Keep moving so Tony doesn’t have to clean up any more of his messes. Even if that means he has to rely on someone else for once. 

He looks down at Natasha, who sits to his left. She meets his eye but says nothing.

He swallows past the dryness in his throat.

“Do you remember when you asked me if I would trust you with my life if the roles were reversed?”

“Yeah.”

Steve can tell she remembers but isn’t sure why he’s bringing it up.

_I only act like I know everything, Steve._

“Well…I don’t know how to do this,” he says, “how to hide.”

The fact that he’s never had to is implicit. 

Recognition floods her green eyes and for a second, Steve wonders if she’ll say exactly what she’s thinking.

But she doesn’t and some part of him is grateful for it. 

“I have a safe house in Luanda. We will stop there and figure out our next move.” 

He closes his eyes and leans back against the interior of the truck, aware that these stolen moments of respite is all he’s going to get for a while.

Natasha rests her head on his shoulder and does the same.

That’s how they end up on the run. 

xxx 

Their first real stop is Istanbul because Natasha knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.

When she tells him to start growing a beard so he can look more like his new passport photo, he doesn’t argue. He’s just grateful someone else can call the shots for a while. 

When he mentions this to her one night while they’re driving, she lets out a rare laugh. 

“Only you, Cap, would think of this as a vacation.” 

He almost smiles but then remembers. 

“Not Cap anymore, Natasha.” 

The mood in the car sours considerably but Natasha says nothing. Instead she shoves a well-worn map pretty forcibly against his chest and turns back to the road. 

“Find me the best route to Kylios; we need to stay away from busier cities.” 

It’s probably for the best that she ignores him. 

xxx 

They don’t talk about what happened. Not really. 

They don’t avoid it either though. It follows them as they move from town to town, safe house to safe house. 

There is acknowledgement of the circumstances that brought them to this point but since a resolution to the overall problem isn’t imminent, they let it be. 

Or more accurately, Natasha lets it be. The unspoken agreement that they won’t discuss the conflict is as practical as the Black Widow herself and because Steve is still mentally dealing with the fallout of his actions, he has no desire to bring it up. 

So he doesn’t and they keep moving forward. 

The only times they come close to talking about it is at night when they sit in the dark together – two insomniacs sharing a small flask of vodka Natasha always seems to have on her.

It’s during one of those times that Natasha tells him about the special gift she received upon graduation from the Red Room. Although the alcohol has no effect on him, Steve feels sick to his stomach. He doesn’t touch her or offer empty words of comfort, however, because that’s not how they operate.

A couple days later though, as they walk past a school and Natasha stops to watch the kids flood the playground, Steve steps closer to her and places a hand on her shoulder. Natasha looks up at him and smiles faintly but says nothing. 

Steve makes it a point to make her smile at least once a day from then on. He tells himself it’s to maintain some balance – slivers of sunshine mixed into all the darkness around them. 

Maybe that’s how it starts.

xxx

He’s not sure when the shift actually happens. It’s not really a shift, but more of a layering if he wants to get technical. He doesn’t stop trusting her or watching her back or thinking of her as a friend and partner. 

But now it’s not all he sees her as, and not all he wants from her.

Their nightly ritual becomes both a time of his greatest comfort and torture as he tries not to give away how he feels. Natasha has always seen right through him but this is something he isn’t sure he wants to share. 

His timing couldn’t be worse and yet it makes sense that whatever attraction he probably felt for her all along has finally bubbled to the surface. This is the longest he’s ever spent with Natasha alone. It’s the most of herself she’s ever shared with him, and Steve doesn’t take it for granted. 

He’d seen the way she was with Banner – how she bared her soul and he pushed her away and the last thing Steve wants to do is be another man who has disappointed her.

He’s already disappointed so many people, he can’t bear adding her to that list. So he pushes his feelings away, trying to distract himself so he doesn’t have to confront it. 

It works for a while – being on the run, he has learned, is extremely exhausting, even for a super soldier. It’s quite easy to pretend that he doesn’t notice how beautiful she is or how kind she is to strangers or how attuned she is to his moods. 

It’s easy to do that when you’re constantly moving from place to place, watching your back. It’s only natural then that when Steve starts to feel normal again, Natasha decides it’s safe for them to stop moving for a while. 

“How long is a while?” 

He tries not to stutter.

Natasha quirks an eyebrow at him before going back to the map she has spread out over the rickety metal table. 

“Don’t know, Cap.” She’s running her slender finger down the map so she doesn’t notice his eye roll. 

His insistence that he stopped being any kind of hero – especially his alter ego – the second he laid his first punch into Tony continues to fall on deaf ears.

“It depends,” she finally stops her perusal and looks up at him with a smirk, “did you pack a bathing suit?” 

xxx

Kerala is beautiful, though not in the same way as Wakanda.

For one, the people here don’t know him as Captain America or as a fugitive. They don’t know him as anything other than a regular guy, on an extended vacation with his wife. 

Their cover story is that they are a pair of married professors from the U.S., in India on sabbatical from a third-tier liberal arts college where they both teach art history. 

So the young woman who sells them milk every Monday doesn’t linger in their driveway and the old man Steve buys mangos from three times a week simply smiles at him and asks in broken English how his morning run was.

That’s the other thing. 

They’re right by the beach, which means that instead of starting his day out among stone symbols of America’s fight for freedom and equality, he runs on white sand with blue-green waves lapping at his feet and the bright clear sky above him. 

Sometimes, Natasha joins him, but most often he goes alone, hitting the pavement right outside their nondescript two-story house and not stopping until he’s hit the ten-mile mark. He finds a spot to sit on in the sand then and spends some time admiring the vastness of the sea, comforted by his own insignificance in the grand scheme of things. 

It’s here that Steve reflects on everything that’s happened to him in the last two months – from Peggy’s funeral until now. The only time he allows himself to feel through every negative emotion he has avoided dealing with thus far. 

It helps him cope and maybe it’s where his healing starts. He isn’t sure though because his guilt has now been replaced by an overwhelming sense of loss. 

He didn’t just lose Tony as a friend. He lost Bucky too in a way. 

Bucky, who had been the impetus for his actions – justification personified – was now just as gone as the rest of the team, and even though Steve understood, it still hurt like hell to be left behind. 

He’d been so wrapped up in his own wrongdoings; in accepting the chaos he’d had a hand in creating, he hadn’t even begun to acknowledge the abandonment he felt. 

Now, he can’t seem to get away from it. He sees Bucky everywhere. 

In the eyes of the women who sell him produce at the market, in the faces of the boys playing soccer in the streets, sometimes even in his own reflection. The first time it happens, he nearly drives his fist through the bathroom mirror. A flash of Natasha’s disapproving face stops him though. 

The last thing he needs is for her to worry about him anymore than she already does. Despite her subtlety, Steve can tell she watches him like he’s a ticking bomb, just waiting for him to go off. 

She’s not entirely wrong.

xxx 

They’re in Thrissur – the closest city to them – for supplies one Saturday when it happens. 

Natasha suggests a short cut to where they’ve hidden their “borrowed” motorbikes and two minutes later, Steve finds himself shoved into a moving crowd of people. 

Natasha has mistakenly led them right into the middle of a protest and his heart rate immediately escalates as he fights to elbow his way through and find some stability in the chaos. 

He tries to switch to soldier mode, draw on his instincts but comes up short. There’s a thin sheen of sweat forming on his forehead and his skin feels clammy and he can’t catch a breath. 

Even without having experienced one before, Steve knows he’s having a panic attack. 

He tries to remember what he’s supposed to do to get through it but is distracted by the pounding of his own heartbeat. 

He doesn’t even know where Natasha is and when he tries to look for her, the angry, shouting faces around him start to blur. He rubs his eyes to blink it away but when he zeroes in on the crowd again, his stomach drops and his mouth goes dry.

It’s not really Bucky that he sees, because Bucky is safely tucked away in an ice prison on another continent. Logically, Steve knows this but it’s like his brain short circuits, because this time, he can’t restrain himself.

This time, the apparition of his friend looks downright murderous and Steve’s instinct finally kicks in.

Like a coward, he turns around and pushes through the crowd until he’s back in the alleyway where they started. 

He doubles over, bracing himself on his knees as he tries to get his breathing under control.

Suddenly, there’s a warm touch on his back and he hears someone calling his name from afar, a soothing mantra in his ear that keeps growing louder and louder until everything snaps back into focus. 

The assault on his senses is almost too much as his super hearing kicks in and the sounds from the protest filter into the deserted alleyway. He is suddenly aware that it’s Natasha who is rubbing his back; it’s Natasha who is whispering his name over and over, telling him he’ll be okay. 

It’s always Natasha and Steve can’t bear to look at her, terrified that the worry in her eyes will be his ultimate undoing. 

Instead, he pulls away from her and mumbles something about seeing her at home later before leaving her behind in the alley.

He walks around for a while, trying to get his bearings in order. When he goes to retrieve his bike, Natasha’s is already gone. There’s a hint of relief, then a sudden urgency to get back. 

Find her and apologize. 

The house is dead silent when he enters but he bypasses the stairs, knowing he’ll find what he’s looking for in the living room.

He does.

Natasha is leaning against the wall with her arms folded, face angled towards the window. He tries not to get distracted by the elegant column of her neck, illuminated by the sliver of moonlight peeking through the threadbare curtains. 

“I’m sorry I ran out on you like that.” 

He thinks getting to the point is probably best.

“You shouldn’t have left. We can’t afford to get separated.” She says matter-of-factly.

He tries not to flinch at the coolness in her tone.

“I know, I, uh…” he stumbles on his words but Natasha is having none of it. She finally peels herself off the wall and walks towards him until he can clearly see the disappointment in her eyes. 

“I don’t know what’s going on with you but for the sake of our safety, figure it out.” Her voice sounds heavy and it reels him in with its weight. 

There’s a bead of silence and then… 

“I’m going to bed.” 

He blocks her path without thinking. Her head snaps up at him, eyes narrowing in defiance. 

Steve knows he has exactly ten seconds to get her to stay but he can’t seem to form the words. 

Tense moments of nothing pass between them until Natasha decides she’s had enough and pushes her way past him. 

The move jars him and Steve bites the bullet even though he’s terrified. 

“I saw him today.” 

“Who?” 

“Bucky.”

“Bucky?” Natasha sounds genuinely surprised so Steve turns around to look at her. Her stance is still defensive but less so than before. 

“I mean I see him sometimes. In random places.” He knows he’s not doing a good job of explaining this. 

Her lips part as though she’s about to say something but of course she doesn’t. It’s becoming something of a theme lately. 

“I know,” he preempts her, then squeezes his eyes shut, “I know I’m not making any sense, Nat but I-“

“Steve.”

He opens his eyes to find her right in front of him, a tentative hand on his arm. 

“Cut yourself some slack, okay? After everything you went through to find him and keep him safe...” 

Steve isn’t surprised that Natasha understands or that she immediately jumps to his defense but it doesn’t make him feel better. It only nicks him further, widening the scab.

“I had a plan, you know. I was going to deal with everything, find a way to fix things after he got better. I told myself this was the only way to make sure he stayed safe, that he stayed _alive_ and now…” 

Steve doesn’t think he can admit it out loud for fear of it breaking him down completely.

“Now I can’t help but think that it was all for nothing, that I made a mess of everything, _ruined_ everyone’s lives, for nothing.” 

He tries to take a step back but Natasha doesn’t let him. Her gentle hand becomes a vice around his bicep and she stares straight into his eyes, like she wants to imprint her next words onto his brain. 

“You didn’t cause all of this, Steve. We all made choices.” 

“Because of something I started, Nat. I-…” 

“No.” 

Natasha clearly has no plans to let him wallow in self-pity, “you don’t get to do this.”

“Do what?” Steve snaps back. 

“You don’t get to wear your martyrdom like a shield, Cap. We all made our own decisions. We all chose-“

“Sides, you chose sides, Natasha.” Steve finishes for her stubbornly, “because of something I started, something I-…”

“Something _we_.” 

Natasha is equally relentless. Her voice comes off as cold as the ice he spent so many years buried under. 

“The word you’re looking for is _we_ , Captain Rogers, your team. We started this mess all the way back in New York, all of us, you, me, Tony, Clint, Thor, Bruce.” 

Her voice hitches ever so slightly over Banner’s name and Steve tries not to let it bother him.

“We set the wheels in motion then and we have all suffered because of it. So you should stop walking around like you’re the only one equipped to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders just because you finally fought for something _you_ believed in and there were consequences.” 

The way she so eloquently delivers the final blow is exactly Black Widow’s M.O. but in this moment, it’s more than that. It’s everything he’s been dealing with thrown right back in his face and damn if it doesn’t spark something inside him. 

“Is that what you think I’m doing here?” He asks in a voice that sounds foreign to him.

He hasn’t had to shout or dole out commands in so long, he forgot he could sound so authoritative…so _dangerous_.

But Natasha is clearly not afraid of him, which only fuels whatever has been set ablaze inside him. 

“Yes, I do. And maybe it’s time you stop.” 

His eyes flicker almost involuntarily to her mouth. The urge to kiss her is suddenly impossible to ignore. It takes him back to another kiss, another woman. He had resisted Sharon for so long, not because he was afraid to let himself be happy – that hadn’t been it at all.

He had resisted because it never felt right. Their interactions always lacked something, something he could never quite pinpoint until now, when it’s staring him in the face. 

Before he can talk himself out of it, he gets close enough to feel Natasha’s breath on his neck. 

Only then does he dare to speak.

“Oh yeah? Tell me, what do you think I’m feeling now?” 

Natasha blinks once, twice, then pulls him by the collar until their mouths collide. 

Steve dives in immediately, finding her bottom lip with his teeth and tugging none too gently. 

It’s not the most dignified first kiss – and technically their second – but Natasha makes this sound that goes straight through him and Steve stops thinking. 

He can count on one hand the number of times he’s been this close to a woman but in this moment, that doesn’t matter. He hauls Natasha up into his arms and she goes willingly, locking her legs around his waist. The friction makes him see stars. It also makes him stumble a little. The only reason they don’t end up on the floor is because he somehow manages to steady himself against the back of the couch. 

Natasha tears herself away from his neck, and he thinks this is it – the moment they decide to take a step back from the ledge. But she takes his face into her hands and kisses him with such conviction, Steve feels it in his bones. 

He realizes that they probably stumbled off that ledge a long time ago.

From there, instinct takes over and everything seems like a blur, despite the sharpness of each sensation.

He’s always known that Natasha could draw out the real him, the man beneath the superhero uniform that always fit a little too well, an indestructible shield that hid Steve Rogers from the world.

But this is different. 

This is hardness meeting softness, uncertainty meeting thrill, desire meeting an outlet. 

He remembers hearing a quote once, in some silly rom-com movie imposed on him by Sam during his pop culture training: “true love is a soul’s recognition of its counterpart in another…” 

This isn’t love, what they’re doing, but as he strips Natasha’s clothes – her armor really – piece by piece, exposing the woman beneath the Black Widow, he can’t help but feel recognition of a kindred spirit; someone who has always been on the same page as him, even when they are on opposing sides.

And that’s more than enough for him. 

It’s ultimately this revelation that makes him slow down, so he can pay attention and he is generously rewarded for it.

Natasha is on the floor beneath him in nothing more than a flimsy pair of panties. He wants to take his time, he really does but the second she parts her thighs, his fingers falling between them to skim her heat, he knows he won’t be able to, not this time. 

Instead he slides her panties down her legs and runs his tongue along the inside of her thigh. Her voice – _his name_ – comes out in raspy syllables. It goes straight to his cock and for a second, he has to rest his forehead on her knee to compose himself. 

“You don’t play fair,” he acknowledges but gives her no time to retort before leaning down to pull a nipple in between his teeth and sucking hard. 

He hasn’t thought this through, there is no plan here, just pure electricity fusing their bodies together and paving the way for him. He goes with it, kissing down her stomach, then pressing his lips to each of her hip bones before sliding his tongue inside of her and licking all the way up to her clit. 

She arches right up into his mouth and he does it again, and again, and again, until they’re both panting and Natasha is shaking, and he thinks if he’s not inside her in the next two seconds, he may not make it there at all tonight.

He gives her one final lick before sliding up her body and capturing her lips without preamble. 

He gets so caught up in her mouth, he almost doesn’t feel Natasha unbuttoning his jeans. Then her hand is on his bare skin and he nearly collapses on top of her. He tears his lips away to watch her as she palms him and there’s something so incredibly sexy about the flushed and determined expression on her face, he almost wants to give into her right then and there, succumb to the friction she’s so skillfully building. 

But his desire to watch her lose control wins over and he pulls her wrist away from his cock and pins her hands above her head. 

Her expression darkens but her pupils are blown wide and there’s something of a smirk pulling on her swollen lips. 

“Now who’s not playing fair,” she teases but there’s no bite to her tone, only a hint of desperation and longing. 

Steve rakes his eyes over her, from the curve of her waist, where he can just barely make out the faint scar from the Winter Soldier’s bullets all the way to the tips of her auburn curls, splayed so luxuriously on the wooden floor. 

There’s really no argument here. 

“Still you,” he breathes against her shoulder before pushing her thighs wider apart and sliding home. 

The feel of her, being surrounded by her warmth and scent is almost too much to take and Steve doesn’t actually begin to move until Natasha does. 

And then everything ceases to matter beyond the woman beneath him. 

The only one in this lifetime who has challenged him on every level that matters and then some. 

The only one who has always, without a shadow of a doubt, had his best interest in mind.

The only one who he wants to watch unravel as he drives her to orgasm. 

He picks up the pace, grasping her thigh and tucking her leg under his arm to change the angle. 

Natasha gasps, back arching and eyes falling shut – letting go completely and damn, if it’s not the most alluring sight Steve has ever seen. 

The Black Widow reduced to shivers and moans and quite pleas for _more_ … 

Knowing that he’s the cause for this only spurs Steve on and he thrusts harder, deeper, wrapping an arm around her lower back to get even closer. The angle allows him to lick a path from her throat to her breasts, pulling one nipple between his teeth and then the other until Natasha bears down on him with such force, he thinks he’s going to cum right then and there. 

He looks up then to find a pair of green eyes watching him with a strange sort of clarity that doesn't belong in this moment. He moves his arm from her back to her neck, drawing her into a kiss that also seems completely out of place in this frenzy they’ve created. 

She is close. He can tell by the erratic pattern of her movements and the faint blush rising on her cheeks and spreading all the way down to her breasts. In a last stitch effort to get her there before him, he seeks out her clit and strokes in time with his thrusts. 

And that’s how he comes. 

With Natasha wrapped around him and muttering a string of Russian curses in his ear as she rides out her orgasm.

When he can finally breathe, Steve flips them over, pulling her on top of him. 

He doesn’t want to think about the mess of bruises she probably accrued just now from being so savagely fucked into the floor. 

As of cue, Natasha looks up at him, resting her chin on his chest and giving him a rare lazy smile. 

“Don’t worry so loudly, Steve. I’ve survived worse…besides I kind of liked it.” 

He doesn’t even bother pretending like he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. 

Instead, he tucks a damp curl behind her ear and whispers, “me too.”

Her smile tapers off slightly but there’s no hiding the afterglow and Steve doesn’t want to ruin it. So he waits until she lays her head back down on his chest to say what he wants to say. 

“What you said earlier, about accepting the consequences, I needed to hear that.” 

There’s a moment of stillness between them where Natasha doesn’t say anything and he doesn’t mind. 

He leans down and kisses the top of her head, whispering a thank you into her hair. 

In turn, Natasha kisses a spot on his chest, right where his heart is still frantically beating. 

They end up sleeping on the floor that night.

xxx 

Nothing really changes between them, not that Steve actually expected it to. 

They still watch each other’s backs, still share the occasional flask of vodka in the cover of the dark, still swap stories about their pasts that no one else knows. Sometimes, Natasha crawls into his bed at night or occasionally slips into the shower with him but other than that, nothing is different. 

Sometimes Steve thinks about taking initiative but decides to let her set the pace, because what can he really offer her while they’re on the run? 

Besides, Natasha all but confirms that she’s aware of his intentions one night when they’re lying in bed. 

“I’m dangerous to love, Steve.” She warns from her customary place on his chest.

He fights the tug on his heart with a smirk and asks playfully, “who said anything about love?” 

She looks at him like she doesn’t believe him but its fine, because as long as they’re fugitives in 127 countries, they don’t need to talk about it or make any difficult decisions.

But of course, they can’t run forever.

xxx 

Tony finds them in Seoul. 

The first thing Natasha says to him when she opens the door is, “you really are incapable of following instructions.” 

And Steve would actually laugh were it not the wave of guilt that crashes into him at seeing Tony for the first time since _that_ fight.

The latter also looks the most troubled Steve has seen him since he told him about Pepper leaving and Steve knows he wouldn’t be here if it weren’t his last resort. 

So instead of ribbing Tony some more, which Steve doesn’t think he has a right to anymore anyway, he invites his former teammate in and gets to the point. 

It’s a testament to how much he has seen in his lifetime, that both he and Natasha have seen, that neither of them even flinches at the mention of Infinity Stones and some all-powerful God who has his sights set on Earth. 

In fact, Natasha sits still as stone beside him, not even moving when Banner gets brought up. 

Steve tries really hard not to be a cliché, he really does but something unfurls at that moment, downright _blooms_ in his chest. 

Maybe that’s why he doesn’t just storm out when Tony looks at him sheepishly and in an uncharacteristically hesitant tone asks, “So, you ready to pick up that shield again, Cap?” 

xxx 

No, he’s not ready. 

He doesn’t think he’ll ever be but he made Tony a promise – never mind that their entire _galaxy_ is in danger – so it must be done. 

All he has to do is walk across the room, pick it up, and strap it to his back. Yet he can’t seem to move a muscle. 

Instead, he runs his hand over his face, wishing back to the morning of Tony’s visit when he woke Natasha up with his head between her thighs. It doesn’t escape him – the irony; that he’s wishing back for a time when he was running for his life but in some twisted way, Steve realizes he was happy, _they_ were happy, he thinks. 

As if his subconscious conjures her up, Steve opens his eyes to find Natasha leaning on the doorway, appraising him with a critical eye like only she can. 

“The team is waiting.” She says but there’s no rush when she steps into the room and comes to stand in front of him. 

Her toned thighs, accentuated by her uniform, are in his line of sight and Steve feels like an idiot for getting distracted by the memory of them being wrapped around his shoulders but oh well. 

It’s not the only thing he remembers of course and his eyes travel up her frame to stop at her face, where he sees a mix of concern and affection that she would normally never expose. 

He learned a long time ago that the Black Widow only lets you see what she wants you to see, nothing more, and nothing less. 

Except the woman looking at him now isn’t the Black Widow, and if that’s not a clear indication that things have changed between them, Steve isn’t sure what is. 

It gives him the courage to reach for her and before he can stop himself, he’s kissing her, a deep, desperate assault on her mouth that tapers off into soft, intermittent presses of his lips until he lets her go. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, resting his forehead against hers, “I just needed that.” 

“Don’t be sorry.” 

She sounds so assured, Steve chances a glance at her. What he finds is almost more calming and grounding than the feel of her mouth. 

Natasha doesn’t blush, she doesn’t embarrass easily, if at all but this is the closest to flustered he’s ever seen her. He holds her gaze for a moment, while her hands slide up to rest on his chest. 

“This just might not be the right time you know, what with us having to save the world…again.” 

She tries for levity, a half-smirk pulling at her swollen lips but while Steve appreciates the effort, that’s not what catches his attention. 

He releases the back of her neck to wrap his hand around one of her slender wrists as he looks at her with what is probably a hopeful kind of intensity. 

“Are you saying there’s going to be time for this after?” 

This is the most direct he’s been with her in the six months they’ve been on the run together and Steve is fully aware that his timing couldn’t be worse but he needs this. He needs to know that there is something waiting for him on the other end of this. He needs the reassurance. 

Or maybe he just needs her. 

There must be something in his demeanor that betrays how he feels because Natasha’s eyes widen ever so slightly and her fingers curl around his. 

Then she takes a step back and there’s a moment of panic that she’ll walk away. 

He doesn’t register that she’s simply going to retrieve his shield until she’s in front of him again, pressing it against him with a smile that belies the enormity of what they’re about to face. 

“Let’s save the world first, then we’ll figure it out, yeah?" 

It’s not a total yes but it’s not a no either. And that’s more than enough for him. 

Steve doesn’t even realize he is already holding the shield until Natasha steps back and appraises him with what can only be described as pride. 

It gives him the strength to lift the shield and slide it into its rightful place at his back. He commits the way Natasha looks in this moment to memory, knowing that he’s going to need it for what’s awaiting them outside the door. 

But for the first time since returning to the compound, he doesn’t feel completely out of place. 

In fact, he feels very much at home and it has little to do with where he is and a lot to do with the people he’s around. 

And he thinks that if Natasha can still be Natasha with the Black Widow uniform clinging to her like a second skin, he can still be Steve with the Captain America shield at his back. 

Everything else, he’ll figure out later. 

xxx 


End file.
